Out of all the new PC hardware in 2024, my top choice is technically over two years old. Even though it was new

HardwareOut of all the new PC hardware in 2024, my top choice is technically over two years old. Even though it was newWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Future)

A photo of an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor resting on an old desk, with a PC Gamer Personal Pick 2024 logo

Gear of the Year(Image credit: Future)Check out more of the year’s best tech in ourPC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024coverage.

Gear of the Year

(Image credit: Future)Check out more of the year’s best tech in ourPC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024coverage.

(Image credit: Future)

PC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024 logo on a black background

Check out more of the year’s best tech in ourPC Gamer Hardware Awards 2024coverage.

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been spoilt for choice when it comes to PC hardware in 2024. Processors, graphics cards, RAM, motherboards, cases, laptops, monitors, handhelds—the list is huge and picking just one for my personal pick from that lot has been quite hard. But then I remembered something that I’ve been using a lot this year and how impressed I’ve been with its stellar gaming performance.

So here it is, then. My personal pick of 2024 is theAMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D. Launched in January for $249, it’s the very epitome of old-new… or should that be new-old? It’s an AM4-socket CPU, which I’m pretty sure has been around since the dinosaurs and regularly confuses palaeontologists when they’re rooting around for fossils.

It uses theZen 3 architecture, which first launched in November 2020, so that’s pretty old too. And then there’s the fact that theRyzen7 5700X3D is really just aRyzen 7 5800X3Dwith lower clocks, and that chip first appeared in April 2022.

So why would I pick something that’s clearly old tech as being the best tech of this year? It’s all about AMD’s gaming wizardry in the form of 3D V-Cache.

(Image credit: Future)

A photo of an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D processor resting on a desk

System memory is just too slow for modern processors; even the fastest DDR5 money can buy doesn’t cut the mustard. So, to make sure CPUs are never left waiting for data and instructions, they all have multiple tiers of high-speed cache built into them.

The so-called last level cache (usually classed as Level 3 or L3) is the largest but slowest of the tiers but it’s still crucial to how fast a processor can run programs such as games. A standard desktop Ryzen 7 chip usually has 32 MB of L3 cache, shared across its eight cores.

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AMD’s last level cache works as a victim cache. Instead of holding any data from anywhere, it just stores stuff that’s been pushed out of the L2 cache to make room for new data. With 96 MB on tap, it saves a huge amount of valuable time being otherwise lost waiting for information to be read from the computer’s RAM.

(Image credit: AMD)

Render of AMD 3D V-Cache technology

Games churn through all kinds of different data so the 3D V-Cache can make a big difference to how well they run, especially once they’re CPU- or system-limited. You can see this clearly in the gaming benchmarks from when I reviewed theRyzen 7 5700X3D:

But it’s not just about average frame rates or even the 1% low figures. 3D V-Cache can help reduce micro-stutters, those fleeting brief moments when the frame rate crashes right down, but not frequently enough to register in the 1% low data.

Let’s say you currently have aRyzen 5 5600X. You could pick up a 5700X3D for$220 at Amazonand, if have a decent enough graphics card, enjoy the same kind of performance uplift that you can see in the above charts.

(Image credit: Future)

A photo of three AMD Ryzen processors resting on a metal heatsink

It does use quite a bit more power than a 5600X but you don’t need to spend a fortune on cooling to keep the 5700X3D’s thermals in check. Thermalright’s PA120SE might not look anything special but it’s a brilliant cooler and costs$35 at Amazon.

That’s $255 all-in for an outstanding upgrade. We’d all love to have an ultra-powerful gaming PC, sporting aRyzen 7 9800X3Dand anRTX 4090, but that’s many thousands of dollars, just for those two components.

In a tech world that often doesn’t make an awful lot of sense at times, the Ryzen 7 5700X3D ticks all the right boxes for me. It’s old tech but that’s irrelevant when you look at just how good it is. We may never see the likes of it again, or at least not for a good few years. Well done AMD, you didn’t get everything right this year, but you absolutely did with the 57003XD.

If you want to find out who won the PC Gamer Hardware Awards, we’ll be publishing the winners on New Year’s Day.

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